I’ve adapted their model slightly to be a bit more suited to marketing. I’ve renamed the four pillars: Goal, Participants, Tools/Methods, and Motivations. And I’ve expanded their list of Why genes beyond just Money, Love, and Glory in order to encourage a more holistic approach to thinking about what a community will find compelling. The Motivation genes I list were adapted from Jane McGonigal’s research on why people play games, and Daren C. Brabham’s research on the Threadless community.

Goal: What specific collective action is the group contributing to?

Create – the group needs to create something new

Decide – the group needs to choose

Participants: Who is the group of people who will be working together?

Crowd – a loosely organized, widely distributed group of people, typically unrestrained by place or time

Hierarchy – a group organized by a management structure, with specific roles and responsibilities for each participant

Motivations: Why will each person within this network be compelled to participate?

Money – in exchange for a monetary reward

Glory – for the opportunity to gain public recognition

Expertise – to hone their skills and get better at what they do

Social – to spend time with people they like

Satisfying work – the feeling of accomplishing meaningful tasks

Be part of something bigger – the sense that they are contributing to something bigger than themselves

Personal passion – because this is something that they love to do

Tools/Methods: How will the group be enabled to participate?

(Tools/Methods: Create)

Collection – each participant contributes in small pieces on their own

Contest – used when there is a limit on how much needs to be created

Collaboration – used when individual contributions necessarily affect each other

(Tools/Methods: Decide – Group Decisions)

Voting – each participant votes for their favorite choice, most votes wins

Averaging – each participant rates independently, and the aggregate ratings are averaged for a final rating

Consensus – participants engage in direct dialogue with each other to agree on a precise outcome

Prediction Market – participants place bets on what they expect to happen

(Tools/Methods: Decide – Individual Decisions)

Market – participants spend money to express their choices

Social Network – participants trade in social currency to guide and express their choices

These elements, or genes, can be thought of as ingredients to be mixed and matched in endless combinations to create experiences suited to different needs and project exigencies.

Our powers combined… we end up with an actionable framework for designing experiences to catalyze collective action among a network of individuals connected by a common interest, aligned with the interest of the brand, that looks something like this:

(Click for full-size image)

Thank you for making it to the end. You’ve just earned 1,000 Bonus points for determination!

This is still a work in progress. Comments are very welcome. What are example of this that you’ve seen or built yourself? What questions arise as you attempt to put this into action? What other thoughts can you share?

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of visiting Bend, OR and speaking to the wonderful folks at Ad Fed of Central Oregon. I spoke about the importance of designing experiences for networks of connected people instead of just for groups of individuals.

In this presentation I discuss why I think this is important, what are some things you should know about empowering people to share, cooperate, and organize collective action, and a few examples from work we’ve been doing at Undercurrent and other brands.